


Bloodsport

by Lendruel



Category: Teen Titans, Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Angst, Blood, F/M, Fighting, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Possible Romance, Violence, a bunch of other shit, demon raven, here thar be angst, probably swearing, stay away little'uns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2018-03-06 21:25:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3149051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lendruel/pseuds/Lendruel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They both have sides of themselves that they can't control, so they might as well keep each other company.<br/>BbRae, pretty much just beating the shit out of each other because their other sides tell them to.<br/>Leave comments if you want to speed up the writing process!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 For the fourth night this month, they are at each other's throats, quite literally. Biting and clawing, throwing themselves with reckless abandon, as the sounds of their warring echo through the hallway, bouncing off the rubberized walls of the training room. The sparring dummies are in splinters, there are dents in the walls, tables are snapped in half, and the two show no sign of slowing. They spin, tumbling, slamming into walls, the floor, each other, anything within reach becoming either a weapon or a target. Sometimes both. No speech, no words; only panting, animalistic snarls, broken only by the occasional ragged expulsion of breath that follows the landing of a blow. For a moment, they separate, the air between them charged with bloodlust and fire, the two of them equally bloody and battered. Both of them equally without control, grinning with sharp teeth as they circle each other. Then, a fist crashes into the side of his face, her legs are swept out from under her, and they fall together, all claws and teeth as their struggle brings them to the ground.

The first time this happened, the two had woken, bruised and aching, in the center of the war-zone that had once been the living room. Surrounded by the wreckage of the couch, its fluffy innards strewn about like snow, they had done what they could to either repair or hide the damage in shell-shocked silence. The couch had been beyond repair, and at some point one of them seemed to have thrown the other through the screen of the television. That had been a nightmare to explain to the team. After a second, similarly expensive incident, they learned to quarantine themselves to the training room or the roof when the need arose.

For once, Garfield finds himself winning. Snarling, fangs bared, he crashes into her again, ignoring the voice in the back of his mind that reminds him, mockingly, she isn't even using her powers. The voice pipes up again, as she sends him flying back against the dented wall, that he's probably lucky. He ignores it still, recovering from the blow and leaping forwards, attacking relentlessly each time she knocks him off his feet. The two of them are equally savage, but at opposite ends of the spectrum; Raven's demon is calculating, all technique and agility. His beast, on the other hand, is raw force, given form and an endless supply of energy. She can put him on the ground as many times as she likes, but he can barely feel the pain. All he has to do is outlast her, stay on his feet long enough to catch her off guard. Every other time they have fought, Garfield has found himself unconscious long before she grew tired, but not this time. This time, he can see her flagging, hear from the gasping of her breaths that her unnatural pool of stamina is finally running low. Through the blood dripping into his eyes, he sees her stagger, swaying slightly, clawed hands still raised. With bloody teeth, he grins, picking himself up once more, head cocked predatorially. She snarls again, eyes red, all four of them. The cruel grin is gone from her lips, now that she is backed into a corner. A slash of her claws, a kick to the center of his chest, ribs almost bending under the impact. The animals screaming in his head tell him to ignore the pain, tell him to welcome it. He is finally winning, for the first time, and his blood is singing, and—and she has him on his back again, her heel digging into his chest. With a frustrated growl, he thrashes, trying to throw her off, earning nothing but a two-toned laugh and a knee in his throat. She rests her weight upon him, moving her knee down enough to let him breathe.

“You lose, Gar.” He looks up at her, still struggling, through a haze of blood, exhaustion, and head trauma. The words don't register at first, neither of them having spoken in the last half hour, but eventually they worm their way into his adrenaline-clouded mind. He sees her properly, sees her violet eyes, no longer flooded red. She kneels over him, one knee holding him down, her hair brushing his cheek. He pants, eyes wide, teeth still bared, staring up at her. Victorious again, her demon is satisfied. The beast, on the other hand, is clawing at his fingertips, screaming for his battered body to _get up,_ get up, _bite, claw, get up, don't—_ Garfield's eyes are pleading, behind the bloodlust. His beast won't let him rest until one of them is unconscious. Raven smiles down at him, gaze soft as she wipes a smear of blood from her mouth. Then, with only the slightest sign of smugness, she draws her fist back once more, and everything goes dark.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

TWO

The room is dark when Garfield wakes up, and his mouth tastes like blood and ash. With a cough, he starts to sit up, only to be halted by a searing pain in his ribs, and a gentle hand on his forehead.

            “I think we might have overdone it a little, that time.” The voice comes from above him, a soft murmur in the dark. His eyes follow the hand up, until they meet the violet eyes of the girl above him. As he tilts his head back in her lap to look up at her, he realizes that they are no longer in the training room: at some point, she must have relocated them to the living room, to lay him down on the couch. Aside from a few scrapes, she seems barely worse-for-wear after their most recent session. He, on the other hand, feels like a bag of broken glass and rocks.

            “You think? _I_ think I have a few broken ribs this time.” He complains, wincing, and lifts one bruised hand to poke gingerly at his torso. “How come I'm the only one who ends up all bendy in the wrong places?” He asks, pouting up at her. She raises an eyebrow, swatting the hand away from his ribs.

            “Even with your powers, and all the animals you've been, you're still only human. I'm—well. I'm not.” She looks up, out the darkened windows, not meeting his eyes, and shrugs. “It takes more to hurt a demon than a person, I guess.” She falls silent after this, shoulders tight. One hand traces through a lock of Garfield's hair, green on grey. He moves one hand up with a scowl, taking hers.

            “Don't say that.” She looks down at him, her throat feeling tight, her face carefully blank. “Don't even think it.” His expression is surprisingly fierce, leaving her thrown by the conviction in his voice. He grips Raven's hand tightly, the knuckles pressing once more against his bruised cheekbone.

            “I—Thanks.” She mutters, looking away, slightly uncomfortable with the expression in his eyes. Garfield looks up at her for a few moments more, with an odd look on his face that Raven can't place. After a while, he simply closes his eyes, resting back against her legs with a soft sigh. His whole body is sore, literally from head to toe, and yet... Something inside him feels satisfied. One of the rare moments when the beast is either sated, or too worn out to complain. So, he stays still, quiet, as Raven's  fingers brush locks of forest green hair from his face.

            It wasn't always like this, between the two of them. They had always been at odds, always bickering, but it had always been harmless. It was only later in life, as their inner passengers grew harder and harder to control, that their fights began to flare larger and larger. Something about the chemistry between he and her, between his demon and her beast, made them at once drawn to each other, and set them at each other's throats. Like some unnatural courtship, their passengers seemed to take pleasure in their competition, in the way the two ended up nose to nose, fists clenched, voices raised.

            The first sign of any real change had been a few weeks ago, when, in the middle of their most heated argument, Garfield had found himself snarling, fangs bared like a wolf.  The growl had been inhuman, animalistic, and he had stepped closer, fingers curling. Just for a moment, before he realized what he was doing, Raven's lips had parted in a wild grin, showing teeth that surely weren't always that sharp, and her eyes.. Her eyes had grown wide with fear, the cruel sneer dropping away, but just for a moment, there had been a flicker of red there. Without a word to each other or to the rest of the team, they had backed away, and fled the scene to their respective rooms. Their teammates had stood, shell-shocked.

            It had been a long night of quiet, self-directed horror for the both of them. They had sat, imitating each other unknowingly, staring at their reflections. Waiting to see red eyes, to see sharp teeth and a savage grin. Waiting to see if they were about to lose control. Neither of the two slept that night, or the next. Or the night after that. When they finally emerged from their rooms, after two days of concerned teammates knocking on their doors, then banging on their doors, then threatening to break their doors down, they were exhausted, nervous wrecks. Robin had removed them from active duty for the time being, until they could talk their problems through and “sort their shit out”. So, as the other three were called away to battle, Raven and Garfield were left, in tense silence, facing each other over the kitchen table. Garfield had been the first to speak, after long minutes of silence, and the plain, childlike fear in his voice had sent a shard of ice through Raven's heart. When he finally met her eyes, his were pleading, uncertain.

            “What's happening to me?” He had asked, fists clenching and unclenching, knuckles white. “What's happening to us?”


	3. Chapter 3

            No candles are lit in Raven’s room. Heavy, dark curtains hang closed against the night sky, and the one barely-used light switch remains untouched. She sits, resting in the air a foot or so above her bed, eyes closed and legs crossed. Despite the quiet of the room around her, her face is anything but meditative; her breathing comes hard, her brows are furrowed. She sways slightly in the air as her concentration wavers, like a buoy in stormy water.

            “Azarath...” she beings, hissing the word through gritted teeth. “Azarath... A-Azar—” she breaks off, breathing hard, eyes shut tight. Her fingertips curl inwards, scratching thin white lines into her thighs as her hands make fists her lap.

            _Give in._ Raven ignores the voice, whispering and smooth like a razor wrapped in silk. She keeps her eyes shut, keeps her back straight, does everything she can to keep her mind empty.

_Give in._ She grits her teeth, the muscles in her jaw working. _You’re just going to hurt yourself if you keep this up, you know._ She ignores it, stubborn, shutting the sneering, condescending voice out as best she can. Not enough.

            _You can’t keep this up forever,_ the sing-song voice taunts her, worming through her mental blockade and filling her head. Try as she might, Raven can’t keep the words out. Try as she might, she can’t quite convince herself that she isn’t hearing them in her own voice.

           

            On the other side of the tower, in a deadlocked room, Garfield is handling his situation poorly. The walls are bare, metallic white, and the door is a seamless panel set into one wall. He might as well have locked himself inside a safe, for all the chance he has of escape.

            He stalks the room, pacing around its outer edges, panting. Resisting the urge to drop to all fours, to throw himself at the walls until they give way.

            _You can have me, but you won’t use me to hurt her._ He snarls at the air, slashing a clawed hand against the steel wall. It leaves a visible scar. For a moment, Garfield is the voice in his own head, the one providing irritating commentary as his body moves of its own accord. At his words, the Beast—because the one operating Garfield’s body is certainly not him—only grows more agitated, turning in circles, breathing harder. After a lifetime of being trapped, helpless, inside the changeling’s body, everything in the Beast’s mind is rejecting his surroundings. Garfield can feel him burning up, enraged by the walls of yet another cage.

           

            For whatever reason—perhaps as a result of a lifetime of rigorous self-control above all else—Raven is having better luck. At the very least, she is still in control of her body, not yet reduced to clawing at the walls. Her mental barriers are still holding, however battered they may be.

            Raven’s greatest weakness, when trying to keep her emotions in check, is her empathy. She can wall off her own feelings nigh-on indefinitely—she’s an adept at that, by now—but she has no guard against the emotions of others. She can sense him now, can _feel_ him, raging and alone. Suffering. His pain bubbles up through the floor, boiling around her, washing over her like a tide and pulling her under the surface. It stabs holes in her mental barriers, holes that widen into gaps that allow her emotions, her demon half, through. It makes her entirely unable to keep her mind empty. It’s possible that, without empathic interference, she could keep up her defenses forever. As it stands, however, they grow weaker with every passing minute.

            _This isn’t sustainable,_ she thinks. _I can’t keep this up forever._ Another wave rocks through her, physically swaying her from her place in the air. He might not know it, but Garfield is the perfect weapon against her barriers; even as she walls in her own emotions, he broadcasts his own, desperate to be heard. Garfield is calling out to her—screaming at her—loud enough that she could follow the waves straight to him if she wanted.

            That thought makes her pause. Raven hadn’t realized it until now, but she knows where he is. If she wanted to, she could pinpoint his exact position in the tower, could make her way straight to him. _This,_ she thinks with a kind of rising dread, _is not information I should have._ In the back of her mind, with a sharp-toothed grin, the voice disagrees wholeheartedly.

 


End file.
